Sue Mouat arrived on Salt Spring Island in 1946 to nurse at Lady Minto Hospital. Soon after, she married Ivan Mouat, a man whose family had immigrated to Salt Spring from the Shetland Islands in 1885.
Sue loved hearing the stories that her husband and his friends told of the old days on the Island. She wished one of them would write a book about their memories. She felt that there was really not enough written about the Island.
Many people tried to capture the Island history with varying results. Ruth Sandwell was one success story. She was able to tape oral histories of many of the old Islanders and these stories were added to the Archives. Charles Kahn managed to pull the information all apart and put it together as a book.
Sue was a member of the Historical Society before she joined the Archives. Her involvement began with twice weekly visits to the Provincial Archives to help research a book. She searched and photocopied pertinent church registers, UNIC records, old government documents and the Sidney Review and the Cowichan Leader newspapers. She also went to the map division of the Provincial government to try to find early maps of the isalnd. She brought all the information to the Island Archives. Sue considers herself a generalist at the Archives. She had helped to catalogue and what she misses in training and expertise she more than makes up for with common sense.
The most intriguing part of her work is fitting the pieces of a puzzle together. Recently she met a man whose grandfather was the Blackburn from Blackburn Lake. He told stories about the Island that his grandfather had told him. It added a new point of view to flesh out previously known stories.
Late last year, The Beaver came out with a picture of a dancer. The article was about entertainment and a nightclub in Montreal in WWII. The next issue had a notation about the woman who was now in her 80’s, that she had married Bill Whims, a former Islander, and she was still alive. A friend had lost touch with Bill but Sue was able to get the woman’s phone number and facilitate a call that spanned decades. Moments like this make it all worthwhile.